History repeats itself. Often. One technology ushers in a new age of media, platforms, experience and then the inherit needs of man demands particular functionality that they found in their old systems but applied to the new. Copy-paste with a touch interface, aggregators of aggregators, multitasking, etc..One thing I find particularly interesting is the idea of user profiles for the same computer. It is something we have had forever when you log into windows (sorry Apple people if this doesn't apply). I don't have statistics but from what i have seen and experienced i don't think this particular feature was/is heavily used.
I don't think there were many people that would actually take over a computer from someone else in the house, log off windows and then log back into their account.
And now we are starting to see the desire and development of such features related a new type of OS, the browser. The thing is that i can actually see this as something useful. Whereas it's historical counterpart, the windows profile, was something i would never use this browser based profile i could see myself changing when i take control of the home computer from my wife for example.
Why? Because in today's personal, social, and connected computing environment your profile has all of a sudden been given meaning, it has an inherent value, one that makes us sign out of whoever's account is currently signed in on Facebook in order to get "my" version of Facebook.
And when something has value it will stick. So I say bring on browser based profiles, and let's usher in an old feature into a new world where they actually might be useful.
1 comment:
Depends on the environment. I havea wife and 2 kids and when travelling on vacation, using window's profile has been a "bless", but going back home, everybody goes back to their computer. In 7 years I know this will disappear because my kids will have their own computer, but just reading your note, I see the future closer,,ja! at least for me!
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